by A. K. DuBoff
“Agreed,” Kaiden said. “Let’s give it a little bit. If it doesn’t make any sign of moving, we can reevaluate.”
“I can live with that,” I replied. Really, I hated the idea of staying in the creepy dark place a moment longer, but I liked the notion of getting into an unwinnable engagement with the hyperdimensional aliens even less.
We settled into a fairly protected nook between some of the larger vines where we had a decent vantage on our alien subject while still retaining multiple escape paths if we got unexpected company. The strange time passage in the plane made the waiting especially bizarre, and I soon had no sense for how long we may have been there. However, I felt none of the anxiousness I normally would have under such circumstances. I was so in the moment that I was surprised when the alien being roused on its bench.
“Here we go,” Kaiden whispered.
I re-centered myself. “That didn’t take long.”
“Honestly not sure about that,” Toran replied as he shifted his position to get a better view.
“What’s the plan?” Maris asked.
I looked around to be sure there were no other creatures nearby. “I think we should start out with a basic visual test,” I said.
Kaiden frowned. “Meaning?”
“Walk out in the open and see if it responds. Well, creep out quietly,” I replied.
“There’s no doubt these beings can detect our presence,” Toran stated. “Even if it can’t ‘see’ you in a traditional sense, heat, electrical impulses, magical energy signature, or any other factors will almost certainly bring you to their attention.”
“But that’s kind of beside the point, isn’t it?” Kaiden asked. “What we really need to test isn’t that they notice we’re here, but if they view us as a threat—or if there’s a way to behave that makes them ignore us.”
I nodded. “Yeah, exactly. I don’t mean to literally test if it can see me, but rather if we can walk by one of these things without getting into a fight.”
“And if it instantly attacks you?” Toran questioned.
“Well, then there’s a whole team here to jump in.” I shrugged. “I know, not ideal. But we don’t have a lot to go on here.”
“True. And like Hoofy said, we can return to the higher plane if things get too intense,” Maris said.
“Exactly.” I took a deep breath. “My crazy idea, so I’ll play bait.”
“Of course you will.” Kaiden sighed.
While I appreciated his desire to protect me, I wasn’t about to let it distract me from learning what we needed to beat the Saps. “I’ll see how close I can get without raising suspicion.”
“Have fun being bait!” Kaiden’s tone was playful, but I could see the worry in his eyes.
“I’ll just obliterate it with my 9D sword if it gets too ornery.” I smiled at him.
“Speaking of which, you might want to heed Hoofy’s advice to keep it sheathed until you need it,” Toran advised. “Activating our artifacts may bring… unwanted attention.”
“Yes, thanks for the reminder.” An item powerful enough to help us transition between planes had to stand out. But, we hadn’t been swarmed—or even acknowledged—yet, so it would seem that the items must be in some sort of dormant state while not in active use.
Keeping the blade sheathed, I slowly stepped from our hiding place, approaching the alien creature as it slid from its perch atop the bench. Its sleek form fluidly shifted from two limbs to four as it touched down on the mossy ground. Blue sparks appeared underfoot with each step for the first dozen paces, then it was almost invisible again in the dim ambient light.
It went against my instincts to approach the enemy with no weapon drawn. I walked as slowly and silently as possible, hoping to minimize the variables in our test. There was no indication that it had noticed me during the initial approach, but when I was ten meters away, the creature suddenly halted and looked directly at me with its eyeless head.
I froze. “I think it sees me,” I whispered just loud enough for my comm to pick up.
“There’s no doubt it can sense your presence in one way or another,” Toran replied in a calm tone. “Just try to be… nonthreatening.”
“Gee, thanks.” I tried to steady my racing heart. Maybe I’d watched too many monster movies as a kid, but I couldn’t help thinking that the creature could sense my fear.
It glided forward, the tentacles along its torso lifting up to point toward me.
Doing my best to project an aura of calmness, I stepped to the side to avoid the creature’s approach path. Its tentacles rustled, but it made no further motion toward me. I continued my slow semicircle around it, glancing occasionally to see if it was still watching me.
“You’re doing great,” Toran said over the comm. “Try to get near that bench where it was connected.”
If anything was likely to upset the Sap, messing with the bench probably would. I tiptoed forward to get a closer look.
The structure was covered in the same strange, dark vines that were ubiquitous in the plane, but the ones on the bench had a higher concentration of the glowing dots. When I was within three meters of the bench, some of the tendrils unfurled and reached out toward me.
The Sap snapped its head around and fixed me in an eyeless glare, its tentacles shuddering. It stepped toward me, vocalizing a series of rapid clicks.
I reached for my sword. “Time for Plan B.”
“Wait!” Toran commanded over the comm. “See what it does.”
I remained still, my hand hovering centimeters from the hilt of my sword. The Sap slinked toward me with its tentacles fanning out to view me from multiple angles. Even on all fours, the creature was taller than me, blocking my escape path. Its jaws parted.
“Wait, Elle,” Toran said again.
I took a slow breath, fighting every instinct to grip my sword.
The creature leaned forward, less than a meter from my face. Its tentacles swept around me, some nearly brushing my clothes and hair.
Then, the tentacles suddenly folded back against the creature’s body and it turned to depart, loping into the darkness in the opposite direction from which we’d come.
“Stars! What the…” I placed a hand above my heart pounding in my chest.
“I have to say, I wasn’t sure that would work,” Toran admitted.
Kaiden nodded. “Yeah, I thought you were going to be lunch in a matter of seconds.”
I glared at them. “All right, that’s the last time I volunteer as bait.”
“But why didn’t it see you as a threat?” Maris asked. “I’d think they’d be all over anything unusual around here.”
Toran took on a pensive expression. “Unless there’s some aspect of us that does belong in this place.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So we… blend in?”
“Perhaps.” He shrugged. “Really, there’s only one way to find out.”
18
Though a single encounter wasn’t enough experience from which to draw definitive conclusions, even hours of testing might still lead to the wrong conclusion about what we could get away with near the Saps. So, we decided to go directly for the big prize: whatever was beyond the guarded wall.
“All right, slow and steady,” I instructed while creeping from the hiding place near where we had first arrived. “Watch your footing.”
The spongy ground made it easy to move quietly, but the tendrils snaking through the landscape introduced numerous tripping hazards. We’d elected to avoid showing unnecessary light that would draw attention to us, so our approach to the guarded facility was mostly on feel.
Having successfully made it past our test subject earlier, I took the lead. We didn’t have much of a plan beyond watching each other’s backs and trying to minimize noise, but there were too many unknowns for a more specific plan.
“Don’t look directly at the guards,” I whispered as we approached the wall.
The two sen
tries sat on their rear haunches, looking more like stone statues than living beings in the dim light. Half of their torso tentacles were raised in the position I’d come to associate with ‘sensing mode’, and their barbed tails were wrapped around on top of their front feet. Like the other Sap I’d just approached, they had no visible eyes in their skulls.
I kept my gaze on the path in front of me as I walked toward the facility wall. Our staging location was approximately thirty meters from the wall, and the ground in between was mostly open with nowhere to hide. Thin tendrils shifted underfoot as I walked, though none tried to climb my legs and tether me. Thanks to the soft ground, our movements were all but silent.
When we were ten meters from the nearest sentry, the creature’s tentacles stirred and its head pivoted to face us while it make a series of low, percussive clicking sounds.
“Stay calm,” I whispered, not breaking stride.
“I can feel it,” Maris whispered back. “It’s trying to get into my mind.”
“We’re just part of the landscape. Nothing special to see,” I replied, hoping she could convert that sentiment into a convincing mental image. When the creature made no further movement and its vocalization subsided, I assumed she had been successful.
We came abreast of the sentries, passing between them while their tentacles swiveled to track us.
“Where’s the door?” Kaiden questioned.
“Dunno. We’ll have to inspect the wall,” I whispered back. Part of me hadn’t expected we’d get this far, so I hadn’t planned what to do next.
Up close, I discovered the wall was a tight mesh of vines, and the blue pinpoints of light along their lengths pulsed in unison. The wall extended at least three hundred meters—the strange distance perspective of the plane notwithstanding—and there didn’t appear to be any breaks that we could use to get through.
“We’ll have to go over it,” I realized.
Kaiden evaluated the wall from next to me. “It has to be eight meters tall. How do we get up there?”
“Climb.” I pointed to the grooves made by the interwoven vines; they’d provide perfect hand and footholds.
“We’ll be completely exposed,” Maris objected.
“Not to mention, touching it may set off an alarm,” Toran pointed out.
“Maybe. I mean, the security seems pretty lax, doesn’t it? There’re only a handful of guards,” Kaiden commented.
I shrugged. “No natural enemies?”
“Yes, this is what I would expect to see from a society that is maintaining internal order rather than protecting against an outside threat,” Toran said.
“Well, our options are to give up or press forward, and I know we’re not turning around,” I said.
Kaiden faced the sentries. “All right, start climbing. I’ll keep watch.”
I carefully reached out to grip the vines, bracing for an alarm or attack. Nothing happened.
“So far, so good,” I told my friends. The vines wriggled under my fingertips, but I was able to get a firm grip. I hoisted myself up with my arms and found a toehold for my boot.
“Scout ahead for what’s over the top,” Toran advised.
“I’m on it.” I easily scaled the wall, finding the woven texture quite suitable for the task.
I slowed as I neared the upper ledge, listening for any sign of more creatures. My fingers found the top of the wall, and I pulled myself up just enough to peek over the top. Unfortunately, there was nothing to see aside from a flat vine-mesh rooftop and a single, thick column rising into the blackness one hundred fifty meters away.
“I’m not sure we can get in this way,” I told my friends over the comm, then described the view.
“There has to be a way inside,” Toran insisted.
I pulled myself the rest of the way onto the roof, testing my weight on it; the mesh flexed but held. “I’ll scope it out.”
I jogged across the rooftop toward the vertical column in the distance. I’d gone no more than thirty meters when I noticed a dark area in the surface to my right. I changed course to get a better look and saw that it was a hole open to inside, only covered by a thin mesh of fibers. “Hey, I think I’ve found a skylight!”
“Can you see anything inside?” Kaiden asked.
“No, pitch black in there.” I tugged at the fibers across the skylight, and they ripped away in my hand. “Not sure how we’re going to get down there without rope, but it’s a way in.”
“Should we go for it?” Kaiden questioned.
“It’s that or walk around the perimeter of the structure,” Toran replied.
“I vote for skylight,” Maris said.
“All right, we’ll be right there,” Kaiden told me.
I set about clearing the remaining mesh from the opening while waiting for them to arrive. By the time I saw Toran cresting the lip of the building, I’d opened a two-meter-by-two-meter hole. My three friends jogged over.
“We’re about to go against everything I was taught as a kid about not crawling into creepy, dark places,” Kaiden said.
“Pretty sure we’ve been ignoring that kind of advice for weeks now.” I smiled.
“We need to know what’s down there. Might be time for some light,” Toran advised.
I sighed. “I really wish we could have brought our gear packs.”
Kaiden shook his head. “I can do a light orb, but that’ll mean using magical energy.”
“Have to risk it,” I told him.
Kaiden conjured a small orb in his palm—faint compared to his usual spells, but blinding after my eyes had become so used to the dark. He dropped the orb through the hole, directing it to drop slowly so we could see what was beneath us. No objects or architectural features were visible at first, but four meters down I spotted the outline of charging benches similar to what the lone Sap had been seated on earlier.
“Make it brighter,” I urged.
He fed a little more energy into the sphere, giving us a better view of the room below. Based on what was visible from our limited vantage, multiple benches were arranged around a central, unseen structure. None of the seats were presently occupied.
“I hate the idea of dropping down there, but we’ll never get a proper look around from up here,” Kaiden said. He left the orb resting on the floor eight meters down.
“But how do we get inside?” Maris asked. “That’s way too far to jump.”
Toran sized it up. “I may be able to make it.”
I shook my head. “Too risky if you get hurt. And that doesn’t help the rest of us.”
Kaiden rested his staff on the rooftop and leaned on it. “Options?”
I looked over at the pile of fibers I’d pulled from the opening. “I wonder if we could make a rope out of that stuff.”
The others assessed the pile. “Where’d that come from?” Kaiden asked me.
“It’s what was covering this skylight.”
Toran picked up several strands, pulling on either end of the strands; they stretched but didn’t break. “This could work.”
I grabbed a bundle for myself and began braiding them together to reduce the flex and increase the strength. With my friends following my example, we soon had a healthy pile of two-meter-long segments, which we knotted together to form a single length long enough to reach the floor.
“I’ll go first this time,” Kaiden volunteered. “Second heaviest, so it should hold Elle and Maris if it’ll support me.”
“I’ll anchor it,” Toran agreed.
The two men got into position, and Kaiden tucked his staff into his back waistband so both hands would be free for climbing. He dropped through the hole and began lowering himself down.
“This is just one chamber—maybe twenty meters square,” he said into his comm.
“Any doors?” I asked.
“Yeah, a couple of archways.”
“Okay, I’ll come down next.” I looked at Toran. “We’ll need t
o figure out where to tie off the rope when you come down last.”
“I’ll figure something out, don’t worry,” he assured me.
I climbed down, followed by Maris. The chamber contained six benches arranged around a bundle of vines in the center of the room. It seemed odd that the room was empty, but there was no way to know how frequently the creatures ‘charged’, if that’s what was really going on. In line with the center of the room, archways opened to the right and left.
Toran began tying the rope to the mesh rooftop material.
“Stand back in case this doesn’t hold,” he advised. He swung through the hole and put his full weight on the rope.
For the first three meters, everything was fine. Then, he suddenly dropped down a half meter before the rope went taut again. “It’s slipping!” He picked up his pace. A moment later, the rope came free.
He plummeted the final four meters, rolling as he hit the ground.
Maris ran over to him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He rose, rubbing his side. “Ooph. Now I wish I’d just jumped.”
I looked up at the skylight in the ceiling, now completely inaccessible without the rope. “I guess we aren’t getting back out that way.”
“Might not need an exit, anyway,” Kaiden pointed out. “Just because we couldn’t plane-transition into this place doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t get out by that method.”
“True. I guess we’ll need to wait for Hoofy to show himself to find out for sure,” I said.
“He’ll come through for us,” Maris reiterated.
I still didn’t share her certainty, but now knowing what he’d given up to help us, I had more faith in him than when we’d set out on the mission. “Let’s find their weak point and get out of here.”
“Isn’t it a little overly optimistic to think there’s one weak point for their entire civilization?” Kaiden questioned.
“Hoofy said that was the case,” Maris replied.
I had to agree with Kaiden’s skepticism on that point. “But isn’t that a really, really terrible design?”
“From our perspective, yes,” Toran replied. “However, if they have no natural enemies—as we hypothesized earlier—then there’s no reason to not have centralized systems. After all, that’s most efficient.”
